Music

Buddy Holly is born

Buddy Holly is born

Author

History.com Staff

Website Name

History.com

Year Published

2009

Title

Buddy Holly is born

URL

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/buddy-holly-is-born

Access Date

March 31, 2015

Publisher

A+E Networks

If you took out a map of the United States and traced a line beginning at New Orleans and running up the Mississippi River to Memphis, the tip of your finger would pass through the very birthplace of rock and roll—a region where nearly every step in its early development took place and where nearly every significant contributor to that development was born. But if the foundation of rock and roll was mostly laid down within 100 miles of the Mississippi River in the mid-1950s, the blueprint for what would follow required the further contributions of a young man born 700 miles to the west on this day in 1936: Charles Harden Holley. Writing and performing under the name Buddy Holly, this Lubbock, Texas, native would have an influence on rock and roll that would far outlast his tragically shortened career.

Buddy Holly spent his west Texas youth learning the piano, the violin, the banjo and the guitar. He formed his first group while still in junior high school. Performing as Buddy & Bob, Holly and his school friend Bob Montgomery played what they called "western and bop”—one of the many creative names used in the mid-1950s to describe the various hybrids of blues, R&B and country & western that would later coalesce into rock and roll. When Buddy & Bob opened in Lubbock for a young kindred spirit named Elvis Presley in 1955, Holly saw very clearly in what direction he wanted to go. And while Holly would never be able to compete with Presley in terms of good looks and charisma, he would far outdo Elvis in terms of purely musical creativity.

By 1956, Elvis had become a superstar performing material originally written by others, and though Buddy Holly was still an unknown, he was blazing a trail that future giants like the Beatles would follow by writing, performing and eventually producing his own material. Both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones would draw heavily on the Buddy Holly catalog either for cover material or direct songwriting inspiration, and Holly would be a tremendous formative influence on the young Bob Dylan, among many others.

In a recording career that lasted little more than 18 months, Holly contributed an astonishing number of classic songs to the rock-and-roll canon, including "That’ll Be The Day,” “Peggy Sue,” “Not Fade Away,” It’s So Easy,” “Everyday,” “Oh Boy!” and “Maybe Baby.” Born on this day in 1936, he died in 1959 at the age 23 in rock and roll’s most famous plane crash.

Also on this day

On this day in 1813, the United States gets its nickname, Uncle Sam. The name is linked to Samuel Wilson, a meat packer from Troy, New York, who supplied barrels of beef to the United States Army during the War of 1812.Wilson (1766-1854) stamped the barrels with “U.S.” for United...

On this day in 1776, during the Revolutionary War, the American submersible craft Turtle attempts to attach a time bomb to the hull of British Admiral Richard Howe’s flagship Eagle in New York Harbor. It was the first use of a submarine in warfare.
Submarines were first built by Dutch inventor...

On September 7, 1896, an electric car built by the Riker Electric Motor Company wins the first auto race in the United States, at the Narragansett Trotting Park–a mile-long dirt oval at the state fairgrounds that was normally used for horse racing–in Cranston, Rhode Island. Automobile companies sponsored the race...

In preparation for his march to the sea, Union General William T. Sherman orders residents of Atlanta, Georgia, to evacuate the city. Even though Sherman had just successfully captured Atlanta with minimal losses, he was worried about his supply lines, which stretched all the way to Louisville, Kentucky. With Confederate...

Slightly more than two months after the United Nations approved a U.S. resolution calling for the use of force to repel the communist North Korean invasion of South Korea, the Security Council rejects a Soviet resolution that would condemn the American bombing of North Korea. The Security Council action was...

Actor and hip-hop recording artist Tupac Shakur is shot several times in Las Vegas, Nevada, after attending a boxing match. Shakur was riding in a black BMW with Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight when a white Cadillac sedan pulled alongside and fired into Shakur’s car. Knight was only...

The San Antonio River floods on this day in 1921, killing 51 people and causing millions of dollars in damages. The flood was caused by some of the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in Texas.
The San Antonio River winds through southwest Texas, an area that is generally dry. However, on September...

In Washington, President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos sign a treaty agreeing to transfer control of the Panama Canal from the United States to Panama at the end of the 20th century. The Panama Canal Treaty also authorized the immediate abolishment of the Canal Zone, a 10-mile-wide, 40-mile-long...

Bishop Desmond Tutu becomes the archbishop of Cape Town, two years after winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent opposition to apartheid in South Africa. As archbishop, he was the first black to head South Africa’s Anglican church.In 1948, South Africa’s white minority government institutionalized its policy of racial...

On this day in 1950, Julie Kavner, perhaps best known as the voice of Marge Simpson on The Simpsons, the longest-running animated show in TV history, is born in Los Angeles. Before taking on the role of the famously blue-haired housewife, Kavner played Brenda Morgenstern on Rhoda, a spin-off of...

On this day, French poet Guillaume Apollinaire is arrested and jailed on suspicion of stealing Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum in Paris.
The 31-year-old poet was known for his radical views and support for extreme avant-garde art movements, but his origins were shrouded in mystery. Today, it...

Attempting a bold daytime robbery of the Northfield Minnesota bank, the James-Younger gang suddenly finds itself surrounded by angry townspeople and is nearly wiped out on this day in 1876.
The bandits began with a diversion: five of the men galloped through the center of town, hollering and shooting their pistols...

On this day in 1977, President Jimmy Carter signs a treaty that will give Panama control over the Panama Canal beginning in the year 2000. The treaty ended an agreement signed in 1904 between then-President Theodore Roosevelt and Panama, which gave the U.S. the right to build the canal and...

On this day in 1953, Californian tennis star Maureen Connolly defeats Doris Hart of Florida to win the U.S. Open 6-2, 6-4 and becomes the first woman ever to win the “Grand Slam” of tennis, capturing all four major championships in the same year.
The 1953 U.S. Open final was a...

U.S. Marines and South Vietnamese forces launch Operation Pirahna on the Batangan Peninsula, 23 miles south of the Marine base at Chu Lai. This was a follow-up to Operation Starlight, which had been conducted in August. During the course of the operation, the Allied forces stormed a stronghold...

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announces plans to build an electronic anti-infiltration barrier to block communist flow of arms and troops into South Vietnam from the north at the eastern end of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The “McNamra Line,” as it became known, would employ state-of-the-art, high-tech...

On this day in 1914, Sir John French, commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), begins his first official dispatch from the Western Front during World War I, summarizing the events of the first several weeks of British operations.
“The transport of the troops from England both by sea...

On this day in 1940, 300 German bombers raid London, in the first of 57 consecutive nights of bombing. This bombing “blitzkrieg” (lightning war) would continue until May 1941.
After the successful occupation of France, it was only a matter of time before the Germans turned their sights across the Channel...